Category: Blog

This material is likely Old Hat to most of the members here at TacAnat.com.  But over the past year or so I’ve noticed an encroaching mentality on numerous internet forums which I can only describe as willful stupidity about the realities of the use of deadly force. People are using terms like "castle doctrine" and other blather as if these are magic words that will somehow preserve them from unpleasantness if they should find themselves forced to use deadly force against another person.

I realize that most people making these statements have no training in the law, in police policy and procedure, and certainly no training in the use of force of any kind, let alone the use of deadly force. But they persist in spouting their nonsense to all and sundry from some misguided sense of righteousness, and so many of them are saying it so often that more and more people are starting to believe it. I think it’s time those of us who have experience or even expertise in the use of deadly force need to speak up and slap these idiots and their foolishness down. Good people’s lives are at risk as long as this nonsense is allowed to be promulgated without challenge.

If you agree with what I’ve written here, I encourage you to copy and paste it into an email and send it to the people you think need to read it.

I’ve been dealing with the realities of the use of force and the use of deadly force for close to 20 years now. In that time I’ve seen the consequences of it up close and personal… fortunately, not in a way that has destroyed my life. But I’ve seen a lot of people’s lives destroyed by their ignorance of the realities of use of deadly force.

If you don’t believe me, dig out the last 5 years of American Handgunner and read The Ayoob Files in each issue. Ayoob doesn’t dwell on it, but the life-destruction suffered by the people he writes about is horrific.

So here’s the short version of what I know to be true about the use of a handgun (or any firearm, for that matter) in an act of self-defense:

1. If you carry or even own a firearm for purposes of self-defense, you are an idiot if you don’t spend the money and time to get training. I’m not talking basic handgun training. I’m talking about training in the use of deadly force.

2. There are 3 people in America who conduct this training at the highest level. Their names are Massad Ayoob, John Farnam, and Clint Smith. Massad Ayoob’s class is probably the most accessible. After I took his LFI-I class in 1998, I went home and registered my entire family for the class. I have since come to realize that John and Clint teach much the same material. And I state without equivocation that if you don’t take one of these guys’ classes but you still intend to use your firearm for self-defense, you’re just asking to have your life destroyed.

3. You can get these Ayoob’s and Farnam’s training for about the price of a good handgun and a holster and a year’s supply of ammunition (if you ever bother to practice with that fancy gun, which most handgun owners don’t, of course). Smith will run you a bit more, but what he teaches is worth the extra dough. If you have a safe full of guns and you haven’t taken training in the use of deadly force, you’re lying about being serious about armed self-defense.

4. If you shoot somebody, even if you did so in what you think was self-defense, have realistic expectations about what is likely to happen.
a. EXPECT to be arrested and charged.
b. Expect to be handcuffed and taken to jail.
c. Expect a very nasty series of interrogations.
d. Expect to have to hire a good lawyer, and expect to spend the next 1-2 years defending yourself.
e. Expect to have to mortgage your house and liquidate all your assets to pay your legal costs.
f. Expect to lose your guns.
Start with these expectations, because they are far more likely than the chances you are going to be allowed to go home and sleep in your own bed for a while. (But if you’ve taken appropriate deadly force training, your chances of making it through this horror relatively unscathed is much better than if you follow all the advice you’ve been reading on the internet.)

5. If you live in a place like rural Texas or Montana, most of what I’ve described in #4 probably won’t happen. If you live in a major city or in a Blue state, most of #4 is likely. But much of it will happen, even if you did everything right.

6. Life isn’t fair. Deal with it.

7. The police are not going to be your friends if you shoot somebody. It’s their job to arrest and charge people who shoot other people, and then let the legal system sort it out. They don’t care if you think you’re a good guy.

8. The prosecutors are not going to be your friends if you shoot somebody. It’s their job to put you in prison for the rest of your life, whether you deserve to be there or not. They don’t care if you think you’re a good guy.

9. Your friends and family–most of them–are not going to be friendly to you if you shoot somebody. People regard killers of other people as pariahs. They don’t care that you think you’re a good guy, and that you did everything right.

10. If you haven’t realized by now that you need some training in the use of deadly force and how to deal with the aftermath, I don’t think there’s any hope for you.

On August 1, 2012,Reagan County Sheriff’s Deputy Josh Mitchell died under my care.

He had been shot with a rifle by a chronic meth-head here in my little West Texas town about 90 minutes before I finally gave him up to the Lord and admitted there was nothing more I can do. I, and my entire trauma team, worked our ass off trying to save Josh’s life. I spent 20+ hours from the time Josh got shot to the time the perp tried to eat his gun (typically for him, a botched job) trying to marshal our small hospital’s resources to be as prepared as we could be to meet the needs of whatever might have come down the pike. I was deathly afraid that I was goiing to have two or three wounded cops in my ER in the next few hours. I can’t begin to describe what I, and key hospital staff, had to do in the hours after Josh’s death to be prepared for the deaths and injuries we were obligated to be prepared for.

I am a damned good trauma doc. I have saved lives more than a few times, but I’ve lost a lot more than I’ve saved. I have enormous resources at my command in virtually any ER I work here in America, but resources and skill can’t save the life of someone whose injuries are beyond repair. 

Josh’s GSW was not survivable. If he’d been shot in the lobby of Odessa General, our closest Level I trauma center, he’d have died. But knowing that doesn’t kill the sadness I feel for not being able to save him. 

I feel surrounded by loss and doubt at this time. We have had our debriefings, our group counselling session that did an enormous amount of good for the folk who do what they do in our little rural county. These folk have been overwhelmed by this situation, and I think we’ve accomplished the first steps in the healing for them. 

But for me, there’s no one. I’m not saying this as an expectation of a pity party. But really, there’s no one who can feel what I feel, other than a handful of smalltown ER docs scattered around the country. I only know a few, and tomorrow (today, really, as I type this…. it’s 4 am) I will be calling the 3 or 4 guys who, like me, are small town ER docs with Big  City ER experience and attitudes to bounce this stuff off of. 

As my good friend Gail Pepin, an ER nurse, says: "If they die, they die."

She’s right.

But here in Small Town America, it hurts to know she’s right.

We are getting pumped and ready for our June 22 Tactical Treatment of Gunshot Wounds class at Hennepin Tech College in Brooklyn Park MN.

If you are interested in this class and haven’t made the final decision to attend, DO SO NOW!!! Enrollment is low for this class, so there is PLENTY of room for you. This class is open to both law enforcement and non-sworn civilian personnel.

Contact me a.s.a.p. by email (info@tacticalanatomy.com) if you want to attend. I don’t have to have your money up front to confirm your spot, but I do need your contact info. And your promise you’ll give me your firstborn child if you fail to attend after promising to do so.

The following day, Saturday June 23, my assistant instructor Elliott and I, along with my son Luke, will be going to the DPMS "Outbreak Omega" zombie shoot down in Morristown. Any of y’all who want to join us are welcome, but their registration deadline is June 15, so you’d better get your poop in a group pronto if you want to shoot with us!

Well, I am enjoying my first Spring down here in West Texas, and I must say it’s glorious!!! Not to rub you northern fellers’ noses in it, but I do not miss the long, alternately dusty and damp, chilly months of March and April as they go in Wisconsin and/or Alberta!

But weather aside, we have other things to be pleased about here at TAS this month.

First thing: I had a great block of training up in Minnesota in March with the Special Operations Training Association of the Upper Midwest (SOTA). I had the opportunity to speak at their annual convention on March 4-6, then held a Shooting with Xray Vision for SWAT class at Hennepin Tech College on 3/7.

I had the opportunity to sit in on Johan Boden’s ballistics class at the SOTA conference. Johan is an old friend of mine from IDPA, and he is also the guy at Federal/Speer who demo’s their ammunition ballistics all over the world. He takes the high road in his classes, meaning he does not comment on ATK’s competitors. He simply demo’s the Federal/Speer ammo line, which is all that really needs to be done. I am not a ballistics expert, but I’ve hung out with a few over the years, and I know good ballistics when I see it… and I can say without a shred of hesitancy that if you want ammo that will perform at or  beyond the established FBI standards under any patrol or SWAT  conditions you can think of, Speer and Federal ammunition will fit the bill. I have carried Speer’s GDHP handgun ammunition in all my carry/duty pistols and revolvers for years, and Johan’s demo at SOTA last month confirmed my choice as a good one. I have also been a proponent of the Federal Tactical Bonded .223 round for years (either 55 gr or my preferred choice, the 62 gr) and Johan demonstrated the exemplary performance of this ammunition in bare gelatin, clothed gelatin, through windshield glass, and even through automobile sheet steel. If your agency is looking at a major ammo purchase and you haven’t looked closely at Speer/Federal, I strongly recommend you get hold of Johan at ATK and get him on board for a demo.

Our SXRV class at Hennepin Co. was a very good class. As usual, the background, training, and ongoing mission of the partcipants drove much of the content of the course. This was a pretty switched-on group of guys, so we were able to cover some of the more advanced material I don’t usually go through in many classes, including such topics as the anatomically-correct used of edged weapons. I have tended to stay away from discussion of edged weapons in my training, but I’m getting questions about knives and other edged weapons a lot more often lately. I’m not sure that we’re seeing more use of such weapons in police encounters with felons, but awareness of them is certainly increasing.

I haven’t written anything about edged weapons under the Tactical Anatomy masthead to date, but I’m wondering if I should do so. Please contact me through email if you have strong opinions one way or another!

BOOK NEWS:  Some folks are waiting for books, and for this I apologize. I am part-way through a rewrite of my Tactical Anatomy Instructor Manual, which will be released as the Second Edition some time this summer. I’ve listened to what people have had to say about the first edition of the book and tried to incorporate new material that reflects the questions and concerns I’ve heard about. I have greatly expanded the educational ("adult learning theory") theme I touched on in the Introduction of the first edition, making it a chapter in its own right. I have also added a lot of material to the Computer Simulator section, and have added a Live Fire Training section as well, all of which is drawn from real-life experience with police departments around the country that are training their cops in the Tactical Anatomy SXRV system.

The Second Edition will be released as an e-book, which means I will no longer be shipping each copy out of my home. I know those of you who have had to wait on orders when I’ve been too busy with medical and/or SWAT team priorities to tend properly to shipping will be pleased to hear that. (… and the crowd goes wild!…) My editor/publisher is working on an all-electronic option as well, so the book may be available for downloading to your Kindle or computer, if we can get it set up right.

I will keep y’all posted here on my website when the Second Edition becomes available.

Upcoming Training: I am working with my longtime friend and training partner in Minnesota, Elliot Gilchrist, to bring a Tactical Treatment of Gunshot Wounds class to the Twin Cities region in June 2012. We are looking at the end of the week of June 18 (so 6/21 or 6/22) for this class, and depending on demand, we may schedule a SXRV for Civilians class as well. Both classes will be open to LE and non-sworn personnel. If you are interested in attending either or both of these classes, let me know by email asap so I can plan for numbers. Tuition for TTGSW is $150.00, and all training materials are supplied. Students will need to bring a change of clothes (a pair of pants and a long-sleeved shirt you can destroy), sidearm, tactical rifle/shotgun, and a modest supply of ammo. And as in all Tactical Anatomy classes, remember to bring along your brain, ’cause you’re we’re gonna make you use it!!

Friends, I must apologize for my lack of attention to the website for the past several months. I am looking into hiring a part-time webminder who can provide updates and do site maintenance for me, since I clearly am juggling too many chainsaws as it is. 

First thing, in response to all the emails: Yes, we are holding CLASSES IN LIVE OAK FLORIDA in October!!

Sorry about the "shouting", but I wanted to get it out there. I will be teaching at a law enforcement seminar in Tallahasee that week, and in conjunction with my friends Massad Ayoob and Steve Denney we decided to piggback a couple of classes for civilians onto the trip. We will be holding an 8-hour "Shooting With Xray Vision for Civilians" class on Saturday, Oct. 23, and an 8-hour "Tactical Treatment of Gunshot Wounds" class on Sunday, Oct. 24. 

"Shooting With Xray Vision for Civilians" has proven to be a highly popular course among defensively-enabled shooters in the upper midwest over the past couple of years, and this is the first time we’re going to take it on the road. This 8-hour course is designed for the tactically/defensively-aware private citizen who has no more than the average layman’s knowledge of human anatomy and physiology, wound ballistics, and legal aspects of the use of deadly force. I STRONGLY recommend that anyone thinking of taking this class get Massad Ayoob’s MAG-20 (formerly, "Jucicious Use of Deadly Force", or LFI-I) class under their belt as soon as possible, since many of the subtleties of the use of deadly force he covers are assumed to be in the student’s memory banks prior to taking Xray Vision. In this class we will cover the political, ethical, and legal realities of the use of deadly force;  real-world gunfight realities; basics of wound ballistics; "caliber wars", or what calibers and bullets will/won’t serve you well in the real world; gunshot wounds and incapacitation;  and a comprehensive review of vital human anatomy in 3 dimension. All materials required will be supplied. Cost of this course is $150 per person.

"Tactical Treatment of Gunshot Wounds" (aka "TTGSW") is a relatively new course I developed in response to requests from several major metro police departments, and has become basic academy and inservice curriculum in several locales, most notably Metro Nashville (TN) Police Department. This 8-hour class is designed to give the layman a basic but highly useful approach to assessing, treating, and stabilizing injuries due to GSWs and other violent major trauma. We will cover the major traumatic threats to survival in a battlefield environment: catastrophic extremity hemmorhage, and ventilatory failure (tension pneumothorax, flail chest, "sucking chest wound", airway obstruction). We will cover the basic but highly effective techniques used to address these problems, including use of tourniquets, battlefield dressings (eg, Israeli Battle Dressing, etc), oropharyngeal and nasopharyngeal airways, needle thoracostomy, and Asherman chest seal. Attendees will receive detailed information on the recommended components for a basic personal "blowout kit", as well as recommended components of a major trauma team kit, and supplier information. We will also cover theory and practice of treatment of major trauma in the "hot zone", extrication techniques, and will round out the day with "Mega-Code" exercises utilizing simulated battle wounds under live-fire conditions. All medical equipment and materials will be supplied. Students will need to bring a serviceable handgun and/or rifle with 100 rounds of ammunition per firearm, as well as standard eye and ear protection. Cost for this course is $150 per person. 

Attendance at either of the above classes requires advance registration and payment through the website. Online registration should be up and running by 8/25, or I’ll be hunting down my webmaster with my 338 Lapua…  But seriously, it will be in place shortly. All registrants MUST provide a copy of their bona fides (a valid CCW license, LE ID card, or letter from an Officer of the Court attesting to one’s good character and lack of criminal convictions) prior to class. No one will be permitted to attend these classes without documentation proving you’re a genuine Good Guy/Good Girl. 

Students enrolling in both classes will get a $50 break on the total price ($250/person for both days). 

We also have plans in place to conduct a Law Enforcement-only Shooting With Xray Vision class on Friday, Oct. 22. If you’re LE or active military and want to access that class, contact myself through this website or Steve Denney (steve@proarmsinc.com, 386-364-4867)  in Live Oak and let us know. We’ll give you the goods once we establish comms. 

See y’all in Live Oak. 

My friends, 2010 has been a hectic Charlie Foxtrot so far, but things have started to settle down. I sold my house (unbelievable in this current real estate market!) which necessitated A Move. It’s been 14 years since my last Move, so I had forgotten what a purgatorial experience it is. The house deal closed Feb. 12, which basically meant I spent most of January sorting, packing, and throwing away stuff, and most of February moving, unpacking, sorting, and throwing away stuff.

The good news is that all of my major rooms are unpacked and, and thanks to my loving and ever-protective daughters, arranged and set up in a manner that could pass for "decorated". My son, who moved back from the West Coast just before Christmas and has been living with me temporarily, was also instrumental in The Move, i.e., he did all the heavy lifting that the movers wouldn’t do. I am blessed to be in my new home, out from under a cripplingly expensive mortgage and second mortgage, and able to start putting money toward my dream of a log house in the woods. (With pre-established fields of observation and fire and fixed emplacements for crew-served weapons, of course…)

So despite the fact that my reloading room is still unpacked, I am able to once again resume my Tactical Anatomy duties. Those of  you who have ordered items in the past couple of weeks, please accept my apologies for being tardy, but your orders will be shipped this week… and new memberships on this site will be vetted and processed.

I am pleased to announce that Tactical Anatomy Systems has taken another step forward in the training world. We have purchased a MILO computer simulator system, and are now offering training using this incredible modality. I have had opportunities to train on most of the computer simulator systems out there including the industry originator FATS system, but in my considered opinion no system is competitive with MILO. Which is why I bought it and am offering it for training.

My lead firearms instructor, David K. Maglio, and I held our first pilot project MILO class on Feb. 20, 2010. We have dubbed it Deadly Force Decisions, and modelled it on the excellent training with this system we have both received from various agencies in Wisconsin, including our close training compadres at Milwaukee PD. Suffice to say that the pilot project was an overwhelming success.

As a result, we are making plans to incorporate Deadly Force Decisions with our already popular Shooting with Xray Vision class, and our recently introduced SIMUNITION-based Tactical Anatomy Force-on-Force program. We are offering all three classes in a single weekend, with options to all attendees to take any or all of the 3 classes. David, who is a Certified SIMUNITION instructor as well as a Wisconsin DOJ-certified law enforcement firearms instructor, has run several Force-on-Force classes for non-sworn personnel under the Tactical Anatomy umbrella now, and we are confident that this is as cutting-edge hands-on deadly force training as you can get anywhere, taught by guys who are experienced and fully qualified instructors first and foremost. 

Our first offering of the Deadly Force Workshop will be in the Twin Cities March 6-7. We are looking forward  to holding more of these Workshops throughout the upper midwest this spring and summer, for both LE and non-sworn personnel. Contact us through this website if you are interested in attending or hosting a Workshop, or any one component of our deadly force training triad.

Christmas is almost here, and soon we will be bidding goodbye to 2009. Good riddance, I might say, given the events that have transpired in the past year. I am reminded of the ancient Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times".

For we are, indeed, living in interesting times. In 2009 we’ve seen the United States federal deficit increase exponentially as a runaway tax-and-spend Congress has plunged us into unprecedented debt. We have seen our economy teeter on the brink of collapse (and some say we’re still teetering…). We have watched as Korea and Iran race to develop nuclear weapons and delivery systems while our do-nothing President apologizes to the World for the "bad behavior" of the United States. And that same President somehow managed to nearly-simultanously escalate the war in Afghanistan and collect a Nobel Peace Prize.

Pandemic H1N1 Influenza ran amok in 2009, causing more panic than anything else, although the death toll was not insignificant. The federal government is about to take over the health care system in the United States; given the government’s record of creating runaway bureaucracies such as the Veterans Administration and the Social Security Administration (either of which could be the poster child for poor service and rampant inefficiency) I am gravely pessimistic about the future of health care in America.

But amid all this gloom and doom, I have to admit there have been some great moments for me in 2009. Despite tight training budgets, we were able to conduct almost as many Tactical Anatomy classes in 2009 as we did in 2008. More cops attended TAS courses in 2009 on their own dime than in any previous year, which tells me two things: first, that this training is needed in the law enforcement community, and second, that there are a lot of dedicated trainers out there who will stop at nothing to make sure their people get the best training they can find. To all those dedicated instructors, I want to say thank you, and don’t give up doing what you do. Officers’ lives depend on you.

I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas, and a happy and safe New Year. Here’s hoping 2010 turns out to be a great year.

Several people have contacted me to let me know that they are having problems registering for the November "Shooting With Xray Vision" class and/or the "Tactical Treatment of Gunshot Wounds" class to be held in the first week of November at Nashville.

I am at a loss to explain these problems, as some folks have registered with no difficulty at all. It may be a server-to-server communication problem, and my webmaster is looking into it.

If anyone is having difficulty using the website registration, you can mail your information (name, email address, snailmail address, telephone number, and agency, along with a check or money order for your tuition to: Tactical Anatomy Systems LLC, P.O. Box 183, Ripon, WI, 54971. I will email confirmation of receipt of your registration when I get it.

Doc